


free hugs

by epanouiii



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Denial of Feelings, Feelings, Gen, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, all the feelings, free hugs, zuko doesn't know what to do with all of them, zuko!centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:47:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27554110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epanouiii/pseuds/epanouiii
Summary: There's a guy giving out free hugs in the courtyard.And for the first time in his life, Zuko wants.
Relationships: Aang & Toph Beifong & Katara & Sokka & Suki & Yue, Sokka & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 108





	free hugs

**Author's Note:**

> whooo this was unintentionally angsty, i legit had planned for it to be a cute thing of zuko wanting hugs but being too shy to go up for one bc he's a touch starved awkward turtleduck. that didn't happen obviously
> 
> tw in end notes

_-1._

Zuko sees him as he’s walking to the campus cafeteria, the one his father funded.

He’s standing, blindfolded, in one of the courtyards, in the middle of foot traffic with a cardboard sign and a plastic jug sitting near his feet. Zuko’s just close enough to make out what the scratchy words say.

_FREE HUGS!_

They’re written with a blue marker, one that matches the blue blindfold the guy has on. Zuko wonders what kind of eyes lie beneath it. Are they blue, or brown, or green? 

He’s smiling, bright and open, and his arms are held out in front of him, as if anticipating the embrace of a friend. Zuko can’t understand how he can stand there so confidently, exposed, _naked_ for all the world to see. Though he doesn’t really need to, as—and Zuko doesn’t know when he stopped walking to admire this stranger—from his spot under a tall, shady tree, Zuko watches people come forward to embrace him—the guy armed with free hugs and a bright smile.

Each hug looks warm, loving, intimate, like he knows each and every one of the people hugging him. But he can’t, because he’s blindfolded. But he can, because his shoulders aren’t tense and the skin around his left eye isn’t raised and red with the memory of a childhood shattered. 

One of the people who come forward to hug him is a pale guy, bald with arrow tattoos, dressed in an oversized orange jumper. He’s grinning, bouncing as he moves away from a small group of people to jump on the guy.

This hug doesn’t look any different than the others. At least at first. It looks warm, not unlike the feeling of dappled sunlight dancing over your cheekbones, but familiar in a way Zuko can’t name. It’s in the way he cradles the bald guy’s head with one dark hand, even though he’s about four inches shorter than him, and runs his thumb in a small circle at the base of his neck.

It doesn’t last for more than a few seconds, and soon, they pull away, the bald guy flitting back to his group and the guy with the free hugs holding his arms out again.

_-2._

The next person to come up to him is a woman with short hair and sharp eyeliner. She strides forward, confident like the guy in the blue blindfold, and doesn’t hesitate before pulling her arms around his torso. 

The guy’s arms come around her biceps, and he rests his head on her shoulder. His head is angled towards her neck, his face covered by her hair. He seems to slump into her embrace, as if she’s a place to come home to, and he’s just arrived from a busy day at work. 

This one lingers, their limbs slowly pulling away from each other. The woman’s eyes are softened by her smile, a small curl of the lips, and she—like the bald guy—walks back over to their group.

To see how they pull her in, just as the man with the free hugs did, makes Zuko pull his coat tighter around himself. 

It’s cold over here, by the tree he’s standing under.

_-3._

The next person to come forward is a woman who looks like the guy, her long, cascading hair a warm shade of brown and her eyes a bright ocean blue. _So that’s what his eyes look like behind that blindfold…_

Only—Zuko can’t see it. 

He doesn’t see an ocean behind that blindfold, no great waves or plunging depths. He sees a sky, wide and cerulean, large enough for a bird to spread its wings and soar. It might sound ridiculous, but it’s all Zuko can picture as he watches them from behind his heavy black fringe.

The two—siblings, he imagines, from their shared hair colour—hug, and this time the guy’s arms come around her waist. They play with her hair, pulling lightly at the ends of it. When they pull away she flicks him in the ear and, from what he can hear over the rustle of leaves above his head, they laugh.

_-4._

The girl who walks—or should he better say stomps—towards the man next is short, much shorter than any of the others, and her hair is held back by a green headband. She holds a cane in her left hand, tapping it across the pavement as she moves. Zuko’s pretty sure the guy is saying something to her from the way his lips move. The sound of it seems to guide her towards him. She looks reluctant, as if bullied into it by her group, thought she laughs as the man drapes himself over her shoulders, bending over slightly as he pulls her into an embrace. 

It doesn’t last very long—the shortest of them all so far—but the girl pulls away grinning, and she punches the man’s shoulder before going back to her group, the one standing out in the open, sunlight playing over their faces as they watch.

_-5._

The last person in the group to walk towards him is a woman with platinum hair. She’s thin and fragile like a bird, and the breeze that sways the trees and the shadows they cast looks like it could knock her over. As if aware of that fact, but acting in spite of it, she paces over carefully to the guy, her large blue cartigan swishing around her legs.

Their hug is…gentle, for lack of a better word. It’s something in the way the man positions his hands around her slim waist, and the way she rests her head on his shoulder. They rock, back and forth, for a little while.

Zuko has to turn away at some point, and so he rests his gaze on the group of people standing in the sun, the ones who’d all hugged the guy giving out free hugs. He figures they’re all friends, by the fact that they seem to know him and each other, though Zuko doesn’t get why they’re all staying.

Maybe for moral support? The guy looks just fine on his own, confident in a way Zuko himself could never be. So for what possible reason?

_+1._

It’s as they pull away—the woman with the platinum hair and the guy with the free hugs—that Zuko realises how far he’s drifted out from under the tree, its shade no longer shielding him from the overhead sun. Its heat pierces his designer black t-shirt. 

He’s now only a few meters away from them.

It still feels weird to be looking at them, at their easy touch, and Zuko averts his eyes to the guy’s ratty converses, where his cardboard sign rests. 

Contrary to what he first thought, there’s more words underneath the _FREE HUGS!_ , smaller but still written in blue marker.

_If you’d like to, spare a buck to fund the Ba Sing Se Cancer Research Foundation (BBSCRF)_

Blinking, Zuko glances back up at the two. The woman has started drifting back to the group, but on the way, her eyes catch Zuko’s, briefly. It can’t last for more than a second, and then she’s turning away, her group embracing her, so alike to the guy with the free hugs, and Zuko able to see the back of her head. The hair there is frayed, thin and wispy, and it occurs to him, suddenly, why the group is here, watching their friend give out free hugs to strangers in a courtyard of Ba Sing Se university, the one funded by his father.

The guy is back to standing with his arms opened invitingly. Before, under the tree and the cool, familiar shade, the idea didn’t seem possible, but now, less than five metres away, the sun blinding him, Zuko can imagine those arms circling around him, gripping his sides, pulling them together.

Quickly pulling out his wallet, Zuko grabs out half of its contents as he walks towards the guy. He bends down and drops it all in the jug by his feet before rising again.

There’s less than a metre between them.

Up close, Zuko can make out the spattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose. It’s endearing in a way it shouldn’t be. His arms are still held out, curled inwards, waiting. Does he knows Zuko’s standing here, less than a a metre away from him, every atom in his body wanting to bridge the gap and feel those lightly muscled arms close around him?

The answer, it seems, is yes.

“So—are we gonna hug or not? I feel like you deserve it, especially after how much I heard you put in the container.”

His voice isn’t as deep as Zuko thought it would be, and it cracks on a word, but it has a warm note to it, like cinnamon sprinkled over a hot chocolate.

“Uh, yeah.”

Suddenly feeling both exposed and hidden, Zuko takes a step forward, and another, and another, until he can count every individual freckle on the guy’s nose. 

Until he’s being hugged.

It’s unfamiliar, as _unfamiliar_ as the others looked _familiar_. It’s warm and tight and all-encompassing. They must come from two completely different worlds, for this guy to embrace him so confidently, so assuredly, even though he doesn’t know the person—Zuko—he’s hugging at all.

This anonymity allows Zuko to pull his arms around the guy’s torso, slowly, hesitantly, though it isn’t until fingers trace lazy circles with his thumb on the back of his neck that he sinks into it, his forearsm tightening around the guy’s ribcage as he tucks his face into the space where shoulder and neck meet.

It smells faintly of cologne, something cheap that his father would never be caught dead wearing, but it’s nice. _This_ is nice.

“My name’s Sokka, by the way,” he whispers into Zuko’s hair, as if this conversation is just for them.

Zuko wants to give his name back, but he can’t get his mouth to open. There’s a hand held over his mouth, eyes blazing as they glare down at him. His scar itches.

( _“Who am I?”_

“ _My father.”_ )

Before he can consent to it, his body is pulling away from the guy— _Sokka_ —and turning towards the campus cafeteria, the one his father funded, where he was originally supposed to go before this little detour. He passes the group, whose eyes follow his every step, as do Sokka’s, the guy with the free hugs. 

He can feel them burning through him.

It’s familiar.

**Author's Note:**

> tw: implied childhood abuse/trauma, implied person with cancer, mention of cancer
> 
> kdjshjidxcjhdsd im so sorry


End file.
